


don't you touch my baby girl

by kryptic



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Grumpy Lord Protectors, Kink Meme, Post-Game, Sassy Teenage Empresses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 10:03:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kryptic/pseuds/kryptic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the kink meme.  Emily has her first suitor and Corvo wants to murder him.  Manly Dad Tears ensue.<br/>(Don't take me seriously can't you tell by the title that I'm a moron.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't you touch my baby girl

She’s started to look too much like her mother.  He’s watched her hair grow into long, gentle waves over the years, her body tall and slender.  She has the rapt concentration and unsettling habit of staring that suggest there may be a hint of Southern fire in her blood, but the rumors have long died off.  They are replaced with new gossip now.

The young empress has a suitor.

Corvo Attano wonders if murdering the boy will land him back in Coldridge.  He stands just behind Emily’s seat at the head of the table and watches him with every ounce of intimidation he can muster.  The boy, quite frankly, looks spooked.

The courting sessions are few and far between for now, but the two teenagers will have their first unsupervised rendezvous tomorrow.  It is a day that Corvo has been dreading since Emily learned how to pronounce the word ‘boy’.  No bodyguards allowed.  An invitation for disaster.

Of course, the suitor is polite enough now.  Biding his time, certainly.  They spend a couple of hours calmly speaking of trade and travel.  Emily gushes over whales and the new efforts to synthesize the chemical makeup of their oil so that the leviathans do not have to be massacred to provide Dunwall with energy.  He nods and smiles vapidly.

Corvo hates him.

He is far too stupid for Emily.  Not only that, he’s too _old_.  Eighteen to her seventeen, but to hear him speak you would believe he was _eight_.  His front teeth are a bit crooked and his ears stick out too much and his haircut went out of style when the last dynasty ended.

Corvo _hates_ him.

The hours seem interminable as the Royal Protector stands at his ruler’s elbow.  Closer than usual and yet not close enough; he’d have to take multiple steps forward to get his hand around the boy’s neck and by then he might already be running…

He blinks at the scrape of chairs, startled out of his homicidal trance.  A few muffled niceties are traded between the two teenagers, and the smile that the empress offers is far too warm for his liking.  Then Emily moves to leave, and the boy _forgets_ to stand when she rises from the table.  Disrespectful little _bastard_.  And then – the greatest trespass of all – as he stammers an apology at her back, his eyes begin to travel down the sleek silhouette of her suit to a place where Corvo would rather no man’s gaze ever fell.

He wonders if she would be terribly upset if he blinded the little shit.

But his face is still a mask of stone as he passes her into the care of her ladies-in-waiting to prepare for her luncheon with the Morley ambassador.  And then, finally, as soon as she has disappeared behind the tower’s double doors, he whirls and _grabs_ the boy and sits him back down again when he tries to escape.  He slams the collapsible hilt of his sword onto the delicate table and sees the boy flinch.  His name is long forgotten, some fleeting mention which has been replaced with the foreboding title of “the suitor”.  It doesn’t matter.

“Look at me, boy,” the Lord Protector hisses through clenched teeth.  Then, when he turns away, hesitant.  “ _Look at me_.”  The words are not loud by any means, but it is the intensity with which they are uttered that wrenches the suitor’s head around.

The young man trembles and forces himself to meet Corvo’s wolflike stare, his neck straining and about to snap with the effort to keep from wrenching his eyes away.  “Y-yes, sir.  Lord Attano.”

Corvo anchors himself with a hand placed on either side of the table and leans in to leer at him.  His teeth are flashing (what’s left of them, anyway), a hint of animal snarl creeping into his face.  His eyes are narrowed as if he truly does intend to kill the boy, or at least severely maim him.  “Easier to stare at Her Majesty’s rear end than it is at me, eh?”

The suitor gulps and his eyes go wide – some other man might interpret it as surprise, but the Royal Protector sees only guilt.  “I swear, sir, I never—“

He is cut off unceremoniously midsentence by the older man now making small, clipped hand motions as he speaks.  “Never what?  Thought I would notice?  It’s my _job_ to notice, and yours to toe the damn line and act a gentleman, or I’ll pry your thumbs off with a set of pliers.”

Beyond the point of argument, the boy simply nods his head and gapes at the man in front of him, all eighteen years of his painfully short life no doubt flashing before his eyes.  The Royal Protector’s proper title is utterly forgotten.  “Yes, sir.”

“And if you so much as lay a finger on the Empress, I’ll have your _head_.  Do you understand me?”  His hand twitches to the sword as if he means to make a demonstration.  The young man releases a pitiful whimper and struggles to stand, nearly falling headfirst over his chair in the process.

“Watch out, young Master,” Corvo snaps, rounding on him.  The sword appears to have leapt into his hand of its own accord.  “Wouldn’t want you to get _hurt_.”

“I trust no one will be getting hurt,” an unbearably serene voice remarks.

Both nobles and every guard within sight dip a bow, and the empress strides through the doors of Dunwall Tower in white silk.  Corvo likes to see her wear white.  It reminds him that _certain_ things haven’t changed.

“No, Your Majesty,” the Lord Protector says.  His eyes hover like crosshairs on the face of her suitor.  “Of course not.”

 

* * *

 

“He’s nice enough _now_ ,” Corvo insists, “but don’t you think that’ll change when he gets a crown on his head?”  He paces her chambers with careful steps.  The servants have all been sent away, his weapons discarded, her collar removed and set aside.  When he speaks to her, it is not as a Lord Protector to his Empress, but as a father to his daughter.

“Corvo,” Emily protests, her voice chock full of teenage exasperation.  “I’m not getting married for at least five more years.  And my husband won’t even get to _wear_ a crown.”

Corvo bats a hand at her and scoffs.  “It was a metaphor.”

Emily seizes her chance to go on the offensive and turns from her work at the vanity, letting her hair fall to her shoulders.  Her voice still sounds slightly childish when she’s upset, though years have deepened its tone until only Corvo can recognize the remnants of her prepubescent tantrums.  “And you threatening him with decapitation this morning?  Was that a metaphor too?”

Caught off guard, he simply stares at her for a long moment before subtly trying to change the subject.  “I don’t want to see that boy manipulating you.”  It truly has been eating at him to watch helplessly from the sidelines as Emily forges a tentative bond of affection with her suitor.  He can safeguard the empress’s body, but never her emotions.

Emily gives him an exasperated look, “I won’t let anyone manipulate me.  I’m smarter than that, Corvo, you know I am.  And if he tries, I’ll put him in that chokehold you taught me.”

The mention of violence sees him perking up immediately, an eyebrow raised.  “Which chokehold?”

“The Tyvian one.”

Corvo allows himself a momentary grin, seven years younger and acquiescing to a round of hide and seek.  “Good girl.  I always knew teaching that to you would come in handy.”  And he almost reaches out to tousle her hair before remembering, the outstretched arm quickly abandoned in midair.  She is Empress now.  There will be no more pirate stories, no more climbing lessons or mock sword fights.  Those years ended long ago.

“ _Still._ ”  With that word, the muscles of his face snap back into order and the years pile up again.  Now, he is every inch the Royal Protector, and he straightens his back accordingly and takes up the tempered steel posture that is remembered in his bones.  His words are painful because they are true, not only of her, but of a woman who stood where she did seven years ago and offered him the same sentiment.  Not to worry.  “I’ve seen too many men try to take advantage of you.”

Three men in particular.  One large and reckless.  One small and frightened.  One handsome and charismatic.  All dead.  Yes, there have been other manipulators, both men and women, who have come and gone since then.  None have been the same and all have been quickly dispatched, but these three linger still.

“Do you still worry about the Loyalists?”  Emily remembers as well, and her face crumples with the weight of mourning.  But she is resilient in a way that he never was, a perfect marriage of the late empress and her bodyguard, strong in mind, body, and spirit and wise, _wise_ beyond her years.

He frowns.

“Corvo.”  She stands up straight, prim and proper, takes him in hand as if he is the teenager and she is the forty-something, almost-fifty, battle-worn, grief-stricken, five-o’clock-shadowed assassin-agent-bodyguard.  “I was ten years old,” she says, “and they were three men who were much stronger and more powerful than me.”  Her voice is cool as water, cold as the waves around Kingsparrow Island.

The memory cuts a slash of shame across his face.  There is still pain underneath, and in the dark, unfathomable eyes.  His failure is written into his soul, mother and daughter, layer upon layer.  Few people can see it in him, but Emily always can.  If she is lucky, some days, she is able to distract him from it, impart some happiness from her life into his to blind him to his pain.  But it never truly leaves him.

She leans to the side and positions her face so that he cannot help but look at her, reaches down and takes his calloused hand in hers.  If there is anything she has always loved, it is the feeling of sandpaper, cracked wood, coarse dirt _familiarity_ in his palms.  How has she gone seventeen years without telling him that?

Emily salves the wound and douses it in rainwater.  Her voice, too like Jessamine’s.  “But you saved me, and I’ve been fine ever since.  I’m Empress now, and the plague is over.  I have a secure rule and advisors that I trust.  And _you.”_ She smiles and loves that the words she speaks taste of honesty.  “You’re worth ten of any of them.  And you aren’t leaving any time soon.”

“I just…don’t want to see you hurt.”  His lip twitches with an embarrassed-father nervous energy, the way it did when her dresses began to shift into suits and the suits started to shape against far-too-defined curves and the curves started to be traced by the eyes of a good-for-nothing boy sitting next to his not-daughter.  “I don’t…  Want you to forget about me.”

“Corvo…”  She steps forward and the fabric of her coat makes a soft rustle as she wraps her arms around his back and presses her cheek against his lapel.  He smells like sea salt and sandalwood and smoke and seven years ago.  Ten years ago.  Seventeen.  He is warm and alive and right there with her, and the appreciation of that will never fade from her mind, not after what happened to her mother.  This she knows.  His body is like a tree trunk in her grip still, and she has to work to fit her arms around, but he had seemed broader and younger and more wondrous when she was a little girl.  Everything had.  “I’ll never forget about you.”

He pulls her head against his chest and hugs her tightly, a loud, almost comical sniff rising into the air.  She is so small still, if not as small as she used to be, and he is _father_ , and she is his to protect.  Until the day when she won’t be his any longer, and that day is already looming on the horizon.  “You’re the only thing I have left,” he confesses around welling tears, “and now I’m losing you."

She curls into him and goes limp in his arms, letting him support all of her weight.  He can still hold her up easily, and for that he is grateful.  She fits against his chest so perfectly, even at this age, and his heart swells with the hope that she always will.  For a long while, she does not speak, only leans flush against him and thinks quite slowly, crawling along for fear that she will hurt him.  But some things need to be said and perhaps they two have not said enough of them and at last she finally asks, her voice muffled by his coat.  That doesn’t matter, though.  He knew the question that she would ask before it so much as touched her lips.

“Do you still miss Mother?”

And of course he still misses her.  He always will.  There is a bone-crushing emptiness in him, the black trenches of deep ocean where no sun touches, the cold where no soul can survive, where the pressure pushes in overhead and compresses his lungs until the measure of a breath is but a thimbleful.  That is what life has been after she died, but Emily is that tiny breath in him, and she is enough.  Enough to keep him alive, at least, though there is no line that can pull him from these depths.

He drinks oxygen before beginning, tries to spare himself the agony of saying “yes”.  His answer is not quite an answer, but the absence of a proper reply is more telling than any other response would have been.

“You look more like her every day,” he says, a hand petting the smooth, dark locks of her hair.  “She would be so happy to see you growing up.  Probably scold me for chasing away your suitors.  She always used to tease me—“

His voice breaks off then, or rather, wheezes to a halt.  It pains her to hear it, to see a man who she has always perceived as strong, stronger than _anyone_ , become weak and immature and crackling.  Then again, Jessamine always did do that to him.  Even from beyond the cold, white grave on the lonely hill.  His tongue is thick and unwieldy from weeping, mangling his voice as he continues.  “Always used to tease me that I would cry like a baby at your wedding.”

A moment of quiet presses in as they stand and hold each other.  His tears drip slowly down along his cheeks and slip into the hollow of his neck until their flow slows and stops.  At long last, she straightens and looks him in the eye.  There’s a pang in Corvo’s heart when he realizes that he does not have to bend to speak on her level and she does not have to stand on tiptoe to reach his.

“You’ll always be my Daddy.”  Her lips curve into a sweet smile, her slender hands resting firmly on his shoulders.  “And I’ll always love you.  But I won’t always be your little girl.  I’m an empress now.”

His eyes find the floor as he dips his head, the weight and heat of shame a powerful gravity.  “I know, Emily.  I know.  I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she protests, shaking her head.  “I know you just want what’s best for me.”  She surges forward and steps into the warm, protective circle of his arms.  He returns the embrace immediately, forming his body as a cage around her as if she will fly away, which she _will_.  This moment, though, is for the two of them.  His breath slows to a crawl.  He inhales and lets his arms drop to his sides. 

“It’s time you went to bed, love.  You have a big day with whatshisname tomorrow.”

“Lucas,” she corrects.  Her face is bright and her manner forgiving.  He is trying, at least, however clumsy his effort might be.  She understands that, as a man who wears the garb of both Royal Protector and Father, his anxiety must be twofold, as his retribution will be if any living soul ever dares hurt her.

“Lucas.”  He falls silent a moment before looking down, a slight frown tugging at his lips.  A hand twitches up to toy with his hair, the beginnings of grey stretching feelers into his dark locks.  His eyes flick up again and meet hers.  “Don’t suppose you’d like a bedtime story.”

It’s a stupid idea, more an ill-humored joke than anything else.  He begins to shuffle away when her voice catches him and wrenches him back like whiplash.

“I would love one,” she says, and her eyes are earnest and true as she takes Mrs. Pilsen in one hand and the man who has always and never been her father in the other.


End file.
